Finally, sometime after midnight, he made his way back to the gallery, still tense, still fucking frustrated and feeling as if he’d punch the next person he saw in the face. Unfortunately, he found Ajax and Leon on the sidewalk just outside The Priory, and they weren’t the type you punched in the face if you valued your life. They both wore their Deacons cuts with pride, and he got the feeling they were waiting for him.

“Evening, boys,” he said, digging the key out of his pocket and continuing on to the gallery.

“ ‘Boys?’ ” Ajax grunted. “This isn’t prep school.”

Travis felt his brothers right behind him as he pushed open the steel gate; it whined as if in protest, and he wondered if Billie heard it. Or if she was already asleep in bed.

“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Leon asked.

Travis turned his head to look at them. “I didn’t think you needed an invitation. You own this shit hole too.”

Ajax nodded. “Glad you’ve seen sense.”

Leon and Ajax swaggered into the gallery, which was dimly lit with a few security lights.

“This is cute,” Leon said, jabbing his finger into one of the rabbit-human-balloon paintings. Cute wasn’t a word Travis had ever heard Leon use before and his tone said he thought it anything but.

“This is a fucking travesty.” Ajax glared around disdainfully, looking as if he’d swallowed a lemon whole.

Although Travis agreed with them on the one hand, he felt strangely protective of the place that was clearly Billie’s love and life. What was that about?

He shrugged. “Priest let it happen.” And maybe that showed that he wasn’t the person they wanted to believe he was. Ajax and Leon remembered him as this great guy who lived for the club and his brothers, but if that were the case he wouldn’t have tossed them all away like trash. Travis didn’t have any love left for the man who’d pretended to give a damn, who’d given him a family and then snatched it all away.

Without another word the three of them trekked inside. Ajax and Leon snooped around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, cursing under their breath at Billie’s pretty things before pulling back chairs and parking themselves at the table.

“It’s not what it used to be,” Travis said, deciding to get straight to the nitty-gritty. None of them were the type to sit and make small talk over cups of tea.

Ajax leaned back in his seat, pulled out his cigarettes and lit up. “It could be.”

Travis sat opposite him. “You buy Micah and me out, it’s all yours. You don’t want to do that, we sell and split the profits.”

“You don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Ajax growled, his blue eyes narrowed. Leon didn’t say a word, but the expression on his face echoed Ajax’s.

Travis glared right back, refusing to be intimidated. Ajax might have been Priest’s VP, but with Priest dead and the Deacons disbanded, Travis didn’t have to take his orders or his shit anymore. “Priest named us as joint heirs. If we can’t agree on what to do with the properties, the estate will—”

“Don’t hit me with your legal shit, pretty boy,” Ajax snapped. “I don’t give a fuck about that. These buildings are Deacons buildings and that’s the way they’ll always be. I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Priest’s murder.”

“It was a fucking accident,” Travis said, unsure whether he believed this to be the case or not.

“No such thing as accidents,” Leon growled, his fists clenched on the tabletop. “You think Priest would crash his bike?”

“So what the fuck if it wasn’t?” Travis eyed Ajax’s cigarette, wishing he hadn’t kicked the habit years ago. He could really use one right now. “What the fuck has it got to do with us?”

“Where’s your loyalty?” Ajax hollered. “You’re a fucking disgrace.”

“Don’t talk to me about fucking loyalty. What loyalty did Priest show us when the shit hit the fan all those years ago?”

“He sent us away to protect us, to protect the club!”

Travis scoffed at Ajax. “What a fucking joke. The club doesn’t even exist. He sent us away to save his skin, I’m telling you.”

None of them knew exactly what had gone down ten years ago. One minute they were going straight, becoming the respectable biker club that does charity rides for sick kids and all that. Next minute they were doing one last job. Well, someone had fucked up—they’d killed the wrong person or something—and a side of Priest they’d never seen before had come out to play, proving to Travis you could never trust anyone.

For the first time Travis could remember, Ajax looked a little worn down. “He left us his property, didn’t he? That’s gotta mean something.”

“Yeah, but why? Have you thought about that? Could just be because he felt guilty, and this was his way of making things right. As if giving us shit will fix the past. Or it could be something more. Whatever it is, I don’t want to be involved. The best thing for all of us is to sell this shit and go the fuck our separate ways again.”

“Not gonna happen.” Leon again, this time with the look in his eyes he used to get when he was in enforcer mode.

The skin on Travis’s back—the one branded with the Deacons mark—crawled as he remembered watching Leon cut the tattoo off a traitor once. There was no point trying to reason with these two, no point trying to make a deal. That would be like making a deal with the devil—if he didn’t do what they wanted, they’d simply kill him or remove his ink. Painfully. They likely wouldn’t let him off the hook even if he agreed to give them his share of Priest’s shit. So…

“Fine, have it your way. I’m in.” At least if they thought he was on their side, they’d stop hassling him, and that would give him time to work out his own game plan. “Tell me what you know.”

Chapter 4

Billie sat up in bed, clutching Baxter to her chest, her heart still as she strained to hear the gruff, heated voices in her kitchen. It sounded like Travis was back, and this time he had company. The part of her that never knew when to keep her mouth shut wanted to throw back the sheets, march out there and tell them to keep the noise down—normal people were trying to sleep—but she didn’t have a death wish. And, if her ears weren’t playing tricks on her, these men were discussing whether or not Sophie’s father had been killed and what they should do to the murderers if that were the case. They’d likely think nothing of shutting her up if she got in the way of their evil plotting.

“Fudge, Baxter,” she whispered, running her fingers over his velvet-soft fur. “What have we gotten ourselves mixed up in?”

He barked in response and she clapped her hand over his little muzzle. “Shh,” she hissed.

“All the fuck I know is that something’s not right,” roared one of the men.

Billie startled. It wasn’t Travis—she already had the sound of his voice imprinted on her brain—but it might have been Ajax, Sophie’s guy. How many bikers were out there? And was that cigarette smoke she could smell? She screwed up her nose in disgust. She’d never be able to get the stench out of her things.

A third voice sounded. “If Priest had had a heart attack on the road it’d be one thing, but if he lost control of his bike, then some motherfucker is responsible.”

“And they’re going to pay.” Definitely Ajax. Did he ever not sound like he was about to shove his hand down someone’s throat and rip out their tonsils?

Billie shivered, despite the balmy temperature.

“Question is who the fuck would want him dead?” came Travis’s voice, and Billie felt a flicker of something she didn’t want to feel down in her nether regions. Her libido had been missing in action for over a year. Why, out of all the men in the world, did her treacherous body have to come alive again for him? She supposed it could be worse; she could be having hot flushes over Ajax.